pathize with the
desire of British and Dutch colonists to check the growth of another
alien population in their midst. But that the Indian has not received
there the just treatment to which he is entitled as a subject of the
British Crown, and that disabilities and indignities are heaped upon him
because he is an Indian, are broad facts that are not and cannot be
disputed. The resolution adopted by the Imperial Council, with the
sanction of the Government of India, was formally directed against Natal
because it is only in regard to Natal that India possesses an effective
weapon of retaliation in withholding the supply of indentured labour
which is indispensable to the prosperity of that colony. But the Indian
grievance is not confined to Natal; it is even greater in the Transvaal.
Still less is it confined to the particular class of Indians who
emigrate as indentured labourers to South Africa. What Indians feel most
bitterly is that however well educated, however respectable and even
distinguished may be an Indian who goes to or resides in South Africa,
and especially in the Transvaal, he is treated as an outcast and is at
the mercy of harsh laws and regulations framed for his oppression, and
often interpreted with extra harshness by the officials who are left to
apply them. This bitterness is intensified by the recollection that,
before the South African War, the wrongs of British Indians in the
Transvaal figured prominently in the catalogue of charges brought by the
Imperial Government against the Kruger _regime_ and contributed not a
little to precipitate its downfall. In prosecuting the South African War
Great Britain drew freely upon India for assistance of every kind except
actual Indian combatants. Not only was it the loyalty of India that
enabled the British troops who saved Natal to be embarked hurriedly at
Bombay, but it was the constant supply from India of stores of all
kinds, of transport columns, of hospital bearers, &c., which, to a great
extent, made up throughout the war for the deficiencies of the British
War Office. There are monuments erected in South Africa which testify to
the devotion of British Indians who, though non-combatants, laid down
their lives in the cause of the Empire. Yet, as far as the British
Indians are concerned, the end of it all has been that their lot in the
Transvaal since it became a British Colony is harder than it was In the
old Kruger days, and the British colonists in the Tr